


Every Wandering Bark

by indigostohelit



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: M/M, Theatre, University, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dressing rooms of their theatre at university—a tiny, underbudgeted, ancient little place that’s needed a renovation since the early sixties—the girls blot their lipstick on the walls. It's not sanitary, say the stage managers; it's not normal, says the audience. And there's a trail of kisses all the way from the star-bright mirrors to the sun-bright stage, and the seats are old and creaking and falling apart, and the lights burn hot enough and blazing enough to turn Darren into a pillar of salt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Wandering Bark

When he's eighteen years old Darren Nichols falls in love with Geoffrey Tennant, and it hurts for years and years.

So.

In the dressing rooms of their theatre at university—a tiny, underbudgeted, ancient little place that’s needed a renovation since the early sixties—the girls blot their lipstick on the walls. It's not sanitary, say the stage managers; it's not normal, says the audience. And there's a trail of kisses all the way from the star-bright mirrors to the sun-bright stage, and the seats are old and creaking and falling apart, and the lights burn hot enough and blazing enough to turn Darren into a pillar of salt.

He falls in love with Geoffrey during that first year. It's two months into rehearsal; everyone's gone home, lives to live and worlds to see, and Geoffrey's sitting with his legs dangling off the stage, kicking his heels absently at the wood.

Darren isn't quite who he will be, yet; he can't think of a word to say. He goes and sits by Geoffrey, dares to let his shoulder brush against his.

The theatre is cold—too cold. The heat is dying out of it, leaking through the tall glass windows and the cracks in the stage, and Geoffrey's body next to him feels, already, like he is made out of fire. Darren winds his ankles around each other and wants Geoffrey desperately, painfully, with the dusty self-mocking panic of a person who’s spent too much time in the theatre, and stares at the sea of empty chairs.

Geoffrey doesn't look at him. The question is—the question always is—whether he's acting or not.

(That's not the question. The question is, when he's acting, does he _know?)_

Tell me about kings, says their director, a year later, Shakespeare in her hand, and the cast calls out: absolute rulership, majesty, force, power, and their director says yes, yes, good, that's it.

Darren is nineteen. He could count the days he's been in love with Geoffrey Tennant, only that would mean that he'd have to admit he's in love with Geoffrey Tennant. They're sharing a house a mile or two away from the campus with three other people, and two of them are biology majors, and one of them does political science, and Darren's still a year or two too young to be _himself_ enough to hate them just for that.

Geoffrey says, love, and the land, and the director's brows furrow, and she says, what.

Geoffrey jumps up, jogs across the stage and slams through the doors. There's no wing space, in this theatre; they can all hear the noise of him as if it were five feet away, and the director coughs and says _well_ and the others laugh and Darren sweeps up in a flurry of scarf and sequined overcoat, throws open the door of the theatre, flips the cast a spectacular finger, and slams the door behind him.

I think we were just kicked off the production five minutes into rehearsal, Geoffrey, he says.

I think _you_ were just kicked off the production five minutes into rehearsal, Darren, says Geoffrey, dry, and Darren laughs, uneasy, and loves him.

Lights up.

Quiet backstage, come the hisses, and even the smallest children in the theatre know, _if you can see the audience, the audience can see—_ but Darren's been able to see the audience his whole life, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep, and it's not the audience that he wants to see, anyway.

You can paint the sky blue, and the stage black, and the corn as high as an elephant's eye; you can build a hundred set pieces and find a thousand props and costume your actors in all the cloth of Canada; you can set the world on fire, or the stage, which is the same thing, and you will still be in love with Geoffrey Tennant, and he will still not love you.

Darren Nichols is twenty years old.

The costume closets are covered with graffiti. Well, he says _costume closets_ —there's everything from folding chairs to a boom box to a grand piano in there, and he picks his way delicately through the landmine, settles himself on a pile of police uniforms, wraps his hands around his knees, and looks.

It's like stargazing. _Derek, May 1969_ , says one scribble, _peter van daan and theseus and judd fry, acting will take you anywhere if you let it,_ and _Taylor S., 1975, these have been the best years of my life_ , and _Kelly, June 1980, thank you, thank you, thank you,_ and they're written on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, so high up no on could possibly have reached there, and Darren closes his eyes and lets the hot tears trickle down his cheeks.

On the other side of the wall is Geoffrey Tennant, blazing like a supernova, a star dying just for the applause, and Darren is in love with him, and Geoffrey doesn't love him back, and that is the way it has always been, and that is the way it is always going to be.

He never does sign his name.

They duel in the quad at midnight; Darren wears a jacket so studded the pale and buzzing electric streetlamps make him feel like a sun, and Geoffrey's eyes are narrowed in exasperation, and this is what it feels like to become yourself, finally: it hurts like hell.

He finds Geoffrey on the stage, a few days later, his feet dangling off the edge. He settles himself by Geoffrey's side, their thighs brushing; the breath goes out of Geoffrey in a frustrated rush, and Darren can hear the anger bubbling up in his body, and he leans over and kisses Geoffrey as hard as he can.

Geoffrey's paralyzed for a long second; then he kisses Darren back, one hand in Darren's hair and the other spread out on Darren's chest, burning hot and brilliant as a star, and Darren Nichols is twenty-one years old and, for the last time, he has absolutely no idea what he is doing.

Geoffrey is as good at sex as he is at everything else, and isn't _that_ saying something, and doesn't Darren know it: and yet. And yet. And yet, he lies in Geoffrey's bed afterwards, body curling by instinct into Geoffrey's heat, and he turns his face into the pillow and shuts his eyes and _aches_ , and has no idea why.

That's a lie.

What's a king, says the director; tell me what a king is. Darren may not be Geoffrey Tennant, and he may not ever be permitted to sign his name on the walls of this costume closet, or kiss this dressing room door—the rules of this world are ancient, and unnamable, and unbreakable—but even he knows that.

He leaves Geoffrey Tennant with an empty bed and lets himself in through the theatre doors.

The theatre doesn't have anyone in it; the dust is dancing in the sunlight pouring in through the windows. But that's always, always the old story: just because there's no one in it doesn't mean there's no one _there._

It's an easy mistake, Darren says to himself; anyone could have made it. But he's twenty-one years old and he aches right down to the core of him, from his clothes to his skin to his flesh to his bones, and everyone who's ever read a fairy tale knows: the king is the land, and the land is the king, and to be one is to be the other, and to love one—well.

Is it his fault he couldn't remember which one wouldn't ever love him back?

(Yes.)

He climbs up onto the stage, turns, looks out at the audience. It's a sea of chairs, empty and red velvet, broken and in need of repair, and he loves them more fiercely than he ever has before.

He closes his eyes, lets go.


End file.
